The present invention relates generally to a system for buying goods and services, and more particularly, to a method and system for administering the purchase of such goods and services by customers who have submitted one or more purchase offers for the purchase of such items.
Most systems for processing the sale of products are seller-driven, whereby the seller prices, packages, configures and offers a product for sale, and the buyer decides whether or not to accept the seller""s offer. In a buyer-driven system, on the other hand, the buyer dictates the terms of the offer and one or more sellers decide whether or not to accept. A xe2x80x9chelp wantedxe2x80x9d advertisement, for example, is a buyer-driven inquiry since an employer is looking to locate and buy the services of a qualified employee. The inquiry is advertised to a large number of potential employees, who may respond by submitting their resumes to the prospective employer.
The parent and grandparent applications to the present application disclose a buyer-driven Conditional Purchase Offer (CPO) Management System that processes binding purchase offers received from individual consumers. The purchase offers contain one or more buyer-defined conditions for the purchase of goods or services, at a buyer-defined price. The purchase offers are typically guaranteed by a general-purpose financial account, such as a debit or credit account, and thereby provide sellers with a mechanism for collecting payment from the consumer. The purchase offers are provided by the CPO Management System to sellers, for individual sellers to either accept or reject. If a seller accepts a purchase offer, the CPO Management System binds the buyer on behalf of the accepting seller, typically by charging the general-purpose financial account designated by the buyer or providing the account information to the accepting seller for processing, to form a legally binding contract. Thus, the CPO Management System empowers individual consumers to obtain goods and services, such as travel or insurance services, at prices which are set by the consumers. The CPO Management System provides numerous commercial advantages to sellers as well. For example, the CPO Management System permits individual sellers to effectively sell excess capacity when actual demand fails to meet forecasted demand. In particular, the CPO Management System provides an effective mechanism for sellers to be confident that if they accept a consumer""s offer, the consumer will purchase the requested goods or services at the agreed-upon price. Yet, the consumer remains unable to use the information to ascertain the seller""s underlying level of price flexibility, which, if known to a seller""s competitors or customers, could dramatically impact the seller""s overall revenue structure.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/889,319, the grandparent application to the present application, discloses a CPO Management System that permits sellers to provide proprietary rules for the acceptance of CPOs. Each of these rules establishes one or more restrictions which the seller is willing to accept for a predefined minimum price. The rules are utilized by the CPO Management System to determine whether to accept, reject or counter a CPO on behalf of a particular seller. In this manner, the CPO Management System can respond to submitted CPOs in real-time on behalf of sellers, with a minimal amount of expensive, time consuming and error prone human intervention.
For many transactions, the embodiments of the CPO Management Systems discussed above, and more fully in the parent and grandparent applications, will effectively complete transactions between buyers and sellers, with minimal intervention by the parties once the CPO has been submitted. The performance of the CPO Management System depends, at least in part, upon its utilization by a large number of both buyers and sellers. Specifically, buyers are more likely to submit purchase offers if they know the purchase offers will be reviewed by a sufficiently large number of sellers. Likewise, sellers are more likely to review offers if a sufficiently large number of offers are submitted. In addition to being a lost business opportunity, purchase offers which are not accepted represent a waste of time and effort by both buyers and sellers. Thus, buyers and sellers alike will be frustrated and discouraged from utilizing the CPO Management System if the acceptance rate for submitted purchase offers does not meet acceptable levels.
Invariably, some buyers will submit purchase offers that are not initially accepted by any seller, typically because the price offered by the buyer is too low. While a purchase offer may not be acceptable as originally posted, buyers and sellers alike would benefit if the purchase offer could be modified over time to increase the likelihood that the CPO will be acceptable to at least one seller. The above-referenced CPO Management Systems do permit buyers to submit a CPO having a range of acceptable conditions, such as a three (3) day acceptable departure period for air travel at a specified price. Once submitted, however, the CPO is generally posted to sellers with the entire range of acceptable conditions in a xe2x80x9ctake it or leave itxe2x80x9d manner. Thus, if a posted CPO is not accepted by any seller, the buyer""s only option is to obtain the desired item elsewhere (generally at a higher price) or to start over and submit a new CPO, having either different conditions and an associated offer price, or the same conditions at a higher price.
While many buyers in the above example may be satisfied with any flight within the specified three (3) day departure window, a number of buyers may prefer departures at certain times of day within the three (3) day departure window, and may be willing to pay a premium to obtain such a flight. Likewise, for buyers primarily motivated by price, it is desirable to initially post a CPO with the entire range of acceptable conditions, in an attempt to obtain a lower price as the reward for such flexibility. With present systems, however, the buyer is unable to dynamically post successive CPOs having an appropriate balance between the flexibility of posted conditions and the associated offer price.
Online auctions, such as those sponsored by eBay/AuctionWeb, Best Internet Communications or OpenSite, allow a bidder to set a maximum bid and have the actual bid automatically increased over time, in fixed increments, up to the maximum bid amount. Such auctions, however, do not allow the bidder to dynamically trade off price for product quality or other product characteristics. In other words, the auctions only permit buyers to increase their bid on the same product. In addition, adjustable price increments are not set by the bidder.
As apparent from the above deficiencies with conventional systems for buying and selling goods and services, such as airline tickets, a need exists for a system that permits buyers to submit variable CPOs containing at least one variable condition to allow the CPO to be modified over time, within the tolerances specified by the buyer in the variable CPO. A further need exists for a buyer agency system that allows a buyer to submit a variable CPO having two variable sets of conditions (first and second) and a set of rules to control the gradual posting of the condition sets between the first and second condition sets, as well as the appropriate adjustments to the corresponding offer price. Yet another need exists for a buyer agency system that allows a buyer to submit a variable CPO having several CPOs, each with defined condition sets and corresponding offer prices, as well as a priority for their posting.
Generally, according to one aspect of the invention, a conditional purchase offer (CPO) buyer agency system is disclosed for processing variable conditional purchase offers (CPOs) containing at least one variable condition. If a posted CPO is not accepted for a predefined period of time, or has been expressly rejected by all potential sellers, the terms of the posted CPO may be modified by the CPO buyer agency system, within the tolerances of the variable CPO, to facilitate acceptance. A variable CPO is a binding offer containing at least one variable condition submitted by a buyer for the purchase of an item, within a buyer-specified price range. A variable condition contains either a range of values or both an initial value and at least one alternate value therefor. A different buyer-defined price may be specified for each possible combination of conditions.
The disclosed conditional purchase offer (CPO) buyer agency system serves as an agent for the buyer and allows a buyer to submit multiple purchase offers at one time. The multiple CPOs may be provided to sellers sequentially or simultaneously. When purchase offers are provided to sellers sequentially, the buyer may control the timing and priority in which the purchase offers are provided to the sellers. When multiple purchase offers are provided to sellers simultaneously, remaining related CPOs should be cancelled, once one of the simultaneously posted CPOs is accepted.
The buyer may specify the variable CPO in a number of ways. In one embodiment, referred to herein as the xe2x80x9cVariable Condition Sets Embodiment,xe2x80x9d a buyer submits a variable CPO by specifying a first condition set and a second condition set, as well as the corresponding buyer-defined offer price for each condition set. In addition, the buyer can provide the CPO buyer agency system with a set of rules to control the gradual posting of the condition sets between the first and second condition sets, as well as the appropriate adjustments to the corresponding offer price. Under the xe2x80x9cVariable Condition Sets Embodiment,xe2x80x9d the first condition set is initially posted and one variable condition within the first condition set is changed to a value corresponding to the second condition set for each time period, in a predefined sequence based on a condition priority established by the buyer, until the posted CPO is accepted.
In another embodiment, referred to herein as the xe2x80x9cPredefined CPO Condition Sets Embodiment,xe2x80x9d a buyer may specify a variable CPO containing several distinct CPOs, each with a defined condition set and corresponding offer price, as well as a priority for their posting. Under the xe2x80x9cPredefined CPO Condition Sets Embodiment,xe2x80x9d a buyer can submit a variable CPO containing several CPOs, each with a defined condition set and corresponding offer price, as well as a priority for their posting. Thus, if the buyer""s highest priority CPO is not accepted within a predefined period of time, or is expressly rejected by all potential sellers, the CPO buyer agency system posts the next CPO in the prioritized list until a CPO is bound, all possibilities have been exhausted or the variable CPO has expired.
The CPO buyer agency system may periodically execute a CPO rule application process and a CPO evaluation process to monitor variable CPOs and to modify the terms of the posted CPO, within the tolerances specified by the buyer in the variable CPO, if the posted CPO has not been accepted by at least one seller within a predefined period of time, or has been expressly rejected by all potential sellers. The CPO rule application process monitors and modifies variable CPOs having a first set and a second set of conditions, and the CPO evaluation process monitors and modifies variables CPOs having predefined CPO condition sets.
A more complete understanding of the present invention, as well as further features and advantages of the present invention, will be obtained by reference to the following detailed description and drawings.